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LoL 2017 World Championships: Semifinals Preview

(Josh Lefkowitz/Getty Images)
Roar Guru
26th October, 2017
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I think it was Kobe on The Dive last week who said at the end of groups that, of the last few years, this would be the one he would be least surprised to see all matches go 3-0.

Not only did that only happen in one match, but it came at the hands of a 3rd-seed underdog; Samsung Galaxy beat out tournament favourite Longzhu, upsetting all bar one remaining pick’em bracket.

I don’t want to dwell on the outcomes of last week when we have two semifinals coming up, but all four matches showed some awesome gameplay. I can’t recommend them all enough, and they’ve only made me even more excited for the last rounds of the tournament.

The Chinese crowd has been absolutely incredible so far, and with both finals featuring a Chinese team against a Korean team, Shanghai is sure to go off this weekend. There are only got three matches left overall, so let’s jump straight into them.

Semifinal 1: SK Telecom T1 (SKT) vs Royal Never Give Up (RNG)
Saturday at 6:30pm AEDT

This match is between the two remaining second-place teams, and it seems likely that the winner here is going to take out the whole tournament. This could also end up being the closer of the two matches; despite strong performances, these teams were still both challenged in their respective quarterfinal matches.

SKT Stats
Worlds Appearances: 4
Best Result: World Champion (three times)
Game record this tournament: 8-3 (72%)

SKT remains a team that is very difficult to talk about. If you turned off nameplates and reviewed their games so far this tournament, or even in the preceding split, it would be understandable to expect them to be taken down in this round. The labels are important though; this is a team with a pretty solid history of picking themselves up where it matters most.

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I’ll be blunt: SKT’s quarterfinals performance was not convincing. The botlane performance stands out as particularly weak; hearing Kkoma explicitly mention them as a cause for concern was jarring considering he called them his pride and joy earlier in the season. Not to say he was wrong, of course – although their struggles were a team effort, Bang and Wolf were noticeably a weak link.

Although they are copping heavy (if well-deserved) flack, this is still SKT. They have been so dominant for so long, and under Kkoma’s leadership they should be able to rebound. They don’t really have a choice; Misfits played extraordinarily well, but RNG are opponents on an entirely different level.

RNG Stats:
Worlds Appearances: 2
Best Result: Semifinalist (this year)
Game record this tournament: 8-2 (80%)

If any of the other three teams remaining at World’s can end SKT’s tournament win-streak, it’s going to be RNG. The Chinese second seed has arguably the most famous AD Carry in the world, Uzi, working in an AD Carry-favoured meta, against a botlane that has shown obvious weaknesses. I’m cautiously optimistic about their chances, but with emphasis on the caution.

Their quarterfinals match was solid, but not entirely convincing. In a meta where games are either over at 25 minutes, or stretch out and are decided by late-game teamfights, having all four games (against the third seed from Europe, no less) go over forty minutes is a worry. I will give them that they are picking scaling team comps, but if they want to be crowned as the best team in the world, they should have been able to take far more decisive victories.

Although I raise that worry, we are still speaking about a team who have only dropped two games this tournament. I sang Uzi’s praises to start, but I don’t want to downplay the strength of the rest of the team. Letme is a smart laner, who plays well in isolation, and should fare well against Huni. Although Xiaohu is no Faker, they end up playing each other surprisingly regularly, trading wins.

Overall, I can’t help but feel like this match depends heavily on how SKT pick themselves up after last week. RNG is an exceptional team; SKT at their best are World Champions, but this tournament that isn’t always what we see. I have RNG winning in my pick’ems, and I stand by that based on SKT’s unpredictability, but this series has the potential to be incredibly close.

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Semifinal 2: Team WE (WE) vs Samsung Galaxy (SSG)
Sunday at 6:30pm

Despite the second semi-final being between two third-place teams, the participants couldn’t have looked more different in their quarterfinal matches. This match has somewhat less potential for upsets, but as we have learned this tournament, anything is possible!

WE Stats:
Worlds Appearances: 2
Best Result: Semifinalist (this year)
Game record this tournament: 8-3* (72%)
*does not include play-in stage

WE had a really good run at the start of this tournament; they looked great in the knockout stage, and still pretty strong moving into groups. Their games in the quarterfinals, however, were surely much too close for comfort. They were in a position to lose the first match of the series, and with Cloud9 taking games 2 and 3, there was nearly a very different result coming into the semifinals.

The fact that the team lauded as possibly the best team from China was so close to being taken down by the third seed from NA is mindboggling. This pretty much shouldn’t happen. While the most important thing at the end of the day was that WE did eventually take the series, it was probably the least convincing win of this stage.

In all fairness though, as the series progressed, WE were able to firm up their gameplay, winning games four and five with considerably more ease. This team have shown themselves to be good at adapting through a series, so although I don’t particularly expect them to win on Sunday, I won’t trust that feeling until their final nexus explodes.

SSG Stats:
Worlds Appearances: 2*
Best Result: Finalist* (2016)
Game record this tournament: 7-2 (77%)
*only including seasons as Samsung Galaxy; Samsung White, a predecessor, won the 2014 World Championship

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Contrast WE with possibly the most convincing match win so far. SSG are an upset entrant, having not only beaten Longzhu Gaming in the quarterfinals but done so in a reasonably clean 3-0. This team is obviously stronger than Cloud9, so it’s pretty reasonable to expect that they will pose a greater challenge to WE, and considering how close WE were to losing the series, SSG have to be feeling pretty good.

One big thing to consider here though is how well prepared this team is (or isn’t). Their only best-of series so far this tournament was that quarterfinal match, against a team that they have played many times in the past; SSG will naturally have a better grasp on how Longzhu Gaming tend to change through a series than they will over WE.

Outside of this though, while the team has its flaws they are still coming into this match hot. Tearing through Longzu Gaming, no matter how familiar they are, is not a feat to be minimised; I may seem to be labouring on that point a bit, but that’s because it’s a huge deal. They made leaps and bounds from the group stage, starting with excellent picks and bans and moving into great execution of their team comps.

There is one solid favourite to win here in SSG. It’s not a guaranteed thing; WE have shown themselves to not just be adaptable, but also willing to play hard and fast to overwhelm their opponents in bloody games. The thing is, so did Longzhu, amounting just as many kills across fewer games, and SSG still took them out; it seems pretty likely that SSG will do the same to WE.

Two thirds of our remaining matches are this weekend. Who do you think we will see move on to face off in the Bird’s Nest Stadium for the finals?

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